001 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX / 21-10-2018 (54')

ALTER.NATiON #001
Donny McCaslin, John Grant, Kikagaku Moyo, Kristin Hersh, Kurt Vile, Mythic Sunship, St. Vincent, Sundays & Cybele, The Mountain Movers, Young Jesus, Hop Along, Frankie Cosmos

KRISTIN HERSH

weekly favtraX
21-10-2018

"Breath In"

ALTER.NATiON #001 on DEEZER

Influential US female rock singer, most famously with her band Throwing Muses. 
KRISTIN HERSH - Breathe In (Kristin Hersh) 3:20
Kristin Hersh has so many sounds and words flowing through her that she has three musical projects and a thriving career as an author to try to contain them all. While several of the projects she released before Possible Dust Clouds, such as Throwing Muses' 2013 release Purgatory/Paradise and her own 2016 effort Wyatt at the Coyote Palace, were elaborate double-album and book affairs, she opts for economy on her tenth solo album...

Melodic Connecticut-based indie rock outfit led by Daniel Greene with experimental and psych-pop elements.
THE MOUNTAIN MOVERS - My Eyes Are Always Heavy 4:09
The Mountain Movers' second album for Trouble in Mind, Pink Skies, sees the Connecticut quartet taking their already heavy psychedelic sound into a new realm that's more formless, free, and intense...

Chicago-bred L.A. transplants evolved from their emo origins to improvisational post-rock. 
YOUNG JESUS -  Deterritory (Young Jesus) 5:58
The Chicago-bred L.A. transplants return just a year after the release of S/T -- a record that signaled the rebirth of the band. Before S/T, Young Jesus were found perfecting a Hold Steady-esque line of indie rock on 2015's Grow/Decompose, then a marked spike in their evolution took place...

An immensely talented jazz saxophonist and flautist with limitless expertise and expressive improvising technique.
DONNY McCASLIN - Exactlyfourminutesofimprovisedmusic (Zach Danziger / Jason Lindner / Jonathan Maron / Donny McCaslin) 4:00
With Blow., Donny McCaslin transitions from world-class jazz saxophonist to indie/art rock provocateur. The musician gained mainstream recognition from the rock world when his quartet collaborated on David Bowie's final album, Blackstar...

Former Czars frontman who embarked on a literate yet heartfelt solo career in the 2010s.
JOHN GRANT - Is He Strange (John Grant) 5:17
On Love Is Magic, John Grant lets the electronics that have lurked around the edges of his music since 2013's Pale Green Ghosts finally take center stage. To make his fourth solo album, he recruited Ben "Benge" Edwards, with whom he worked on Mr. Dynamite, the debut from his dark electro-pop side project Creep Show...

A musical polymath whose St. Vincent project gained praise for emotionally intricate songwriting and its blend of rock, jazz, electronic, and classical touches. 
St. VINCENT -  Masseduction 3:40
Even as her albums and concerts become more ambitious, St. Vincent's Annie Clark wouldn't be anywhere without the fundamentals she reminds listeners of with MassEducation. Recorded over a couple of evenings during MASSEDUCTION's mixing sessions, on the album Clark and pianist Thomas Bartlett strip down the album's songs to reveal new layers of closeness and distance, sincerity and artifice...

Heavy instrumental band from Copenhagen taking notes from the limitlessness of free jazz and the volume of '70s psych.
MYTHIC SUNSHIP - Way Ahead 7:05
Mythic Sunship’s sound has been described as “the ethos of free jazz in a doom setting”. On this 2xLP set, recorded and mixed in the studio of Causa Sui’s Jonas Munk’s, the band goes even further and let’s saxophone burn into the mix...

Japanese psychedelic rock collective who incorporate Krautrock, dub, and folk-rock influences; founded by Kazuo Tsubouchi in 2004.
SUNDAYS & CYBELE - Unbalanced 5:21
Following 2017's folky, Krautrocky Chaos & Systems, Japanese psych group Sundays & Cybele set the controls for The Dark Side of the Moon on their 2018 release. On the Grass is an overt homage to Pink Floyd's monolithic masterpiece from 1973, even nicking its title from the lyrics to the song Brain Damage...

Japanese psychedelic rock band combining elements of Krautrock, Indian ragas, and acid folk.
KIKAGAKU MOYO - Orange Peel (Go Kurosawa) 4:27
After building a solid backlog of unpredictable records that flowed through jazz, psych, prog, and space rock territory like cosmic drifters, Japanese combo Kikagaku Moyo settle down a little bit on 2018's Masana Temples, and come up with their most unified and cohesive record yet...

Philadelphia band whose punk-injected, literate indie rock is led by idiosyncratic vocalist/songwriter Frances Quinlan.
Hop Along - How Simple 3:48
...On first listen, “How Simple” might seem like a straight-ahead breakup song; Quinlan’s refrain of “Don’t worry, we will both find out, just not together” outlines a recent rift, while girl group-style backing vocals sound like her crew rallying around her for support. But, at other moments, that familiar approach disappears behind a slew of other worries...

The remarkably prolific Greta Kline taps into the D.I.Y. ethos of K Records and the early-2000s N.Y.C. anti-folk scene.
Frankie Cosmos - Being Alive 2:22
...“Being Alive” is a song about being pathetically in love—the kind of all-consuming love that massacres you, that puts you on edge at all times. The track hinges on intense swerves in tempo that mirror the speed of infatuation: slow during melancholic daydreams and quick while flustered and giddy. The most exhilarating part is a breakneck drum interlude smack in the middle, and the most soul-stirring is when Kline’s bandmates chime in around a misty bassline and agree that, yes, this whole living thing is wild. ...

From lo-fi roots and compulsive recording, this fuzzy Philly songwriter grew a huge body of strong and constantly evolving solo work.
KURT VILE - Cold Was The Wind (Kurt Vile) 4:51
Following the dusky wandering of 2015's B'lieve I'm Goin Down... and the sometimes cloying 2017 Courtney Barnett collaboration Lotta Sea Lice, restless workingman Kurt Vile looked to his time in transit for his seventh album, Bottle It In. The songs here were recorded over the course of two years in various studios and locations across the U.S., and Vile assembled them between tours and road-trip vacations with his family...

Donny McCaslin, John Grant, Kikagaku Moyo, Kristin Hersh, Kurt Vile, Mythic Sunship, St. Vincent, Sundays & Cybele, The Mountain Movers, Young Jesus, Hop Along, Frankie Cosmos